Vishwaroopam 2 is an unnecessary sequel and Kamal Haasan meanders with constant references to the first film, thereby disrupting the narrative and pace, says our review.

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Suhani Singh

Mumbai

August 10, 2018

UPDATED: August 10, 2018 20:25 IST

Kamal Haasan in Vishwaroop 2

Movie Name: Vishwaroopam 2

Cast: Kamal Haasan, Andrea Jeremiah, Pooja Kumar

Director: Kamal Haasan

(Note: This is the review of the Hindi-dubbed version, Vishwaroop 2. Watch this space for the Tamil review)

In what is supposed to be his third last film, Kamal Haasan continues his mission to be superhuman in Vishwaroop 2. This time around, his sleeper agent Wisam Ahmed Kashmiri is required to fight underwater, and has targets in India and in the United Kingdom. The sequel arrives six years late but not much has changed.

Haasan's penchant for flashbacks and frozen frames of action sequences is still alive. Kashmiri's Research & Analysis Wing colleague Ashmita (Andrea Jeremiah) continues to be jealous of his nuclear oncologist wife Nirupama (Pooja Kumar) who in turn wants to fix her marital relationship. Shekhar Kapur as Haasan's boss Jagannathan continues to look lost, and Rahul Bose hams his way through the baddie act. Waheeda Rehman makes a special appearance as Kashmiri's Alzheimer's-stricken mother. Audiences would wish that like her character they too could forget majority of Vishwaroop 2 which is several notches low on entertainment than its average predecessor.

That is largely because Haasan is short on ideas on why Kashmiri's journey needs to continue. Vishwaroop was watchable thanks to Kashmiri's fascinating secret life, acrobatic heroics and his moral compass coming into play. But Kashmiri is an open book in part 2, with little of his personality or past life left to discover. Haasan fills in the gaps of Kashmiri's back story but they are not that big in the first place to merit a two-hour-20-minute film. His stunts, many of them hardly credible, seem to be simply an exercise in vanity than riveting.

Vishwaroop 2 sees Kashmiri and his gang head to the United Kingdom to drop off the body of their deceased British colleague. Soon, they find themselves under attack from an Indian agent gone rogue. But before one can make sense of as to why Anant Mahadevan's character wants Kashmiri out of the way, Haasan returns to events - predominantly violent sequences - from the first film repeatedly, thereby disrupting the narrative of the second and needlessly dragging what should have been a taut action thriller.

Instead we see a song which reveals how Ashmita came to be smitten by Kashmiri during training or get unintentional hilarity such as when Kapur's Jagannathan tells Kashmiri to not die because he has to be a sleeper agent and get married. On other occasions Kashmiri does what he does best - being a straight-talking assassin who somehow gets out of a sticky situation and diffuse bombs, one of which is some World War 2 relic buried underwater.

Rahul Bose's Omar Qureshi here is a late addition, really relevant only in the last half hour. This absence of a menacing foe along with a gripping narrative is what makes Kashmiri more of a spy in search of a dangerous mission or trying to make everything seem like a dangerous mission. R&AW also doesn't come off looking too smart, given it holds debriefing sessions in public places and seems to depend on the services of just one man to save the nation. Instead of a discernible plot, audiences have to sit through Ashmita taunting Nirupama and Haasan engaging in self-congratulatory dialogue.

Vishwaroop 2 is a reminder that killing off a villain in the first part is always better than keeping him alive especially when he is on the verge of dying anyway. Haasan could have invested his energies on something more constructive - his second last Sabaash Naidu sounds fun - and audiences would have been spared a dull film.